Sep. 23, 2013 7:50 AM

Written by

How does Alabama define a violent crime?

Alabama state law lists 45 offenses and “any substantially similar offense” as violent crimes. Some, such as murder and first-degree robbery, are self-explanatory; inmates convicted of those two offenses made up a quarter of the prison population in 2012. Other violent crimes do not necessarily involve an act of violence against another person. Drug trafficking and third-degree robbery, which involves breaking into a house without harming someone or possessing a weapon, are considered violent crimes under Alabama law. Third-degree assault, which the law defines as intentionally, recklessly or with criminal negligence doing physical harm to someone, is not classified as a violent crime. However, doing physical harm to certain classes of workers is considered second-degree assault, a felony.

More

ADVERTISEMENT

Creating crimes is easy, and popular. Managing criminals is difficult, and risky.

Since 2000, the state Legislature has created at least 73 felonies — some new crimes, some increased penalties for old ones. In 2013 alone, Alabama lawmakers created eight felonies, ranging from elder abuse to aggravated abuse of animals. Most have had a minimal impact on the state’s prison population.

In that same time, legislators passed just 11 bills addressing state sentencing laws, a contributing factor to prison overcrowding. Lawmakers have enthusiastically approved billions of dollars in bonds and tax credits to lure out-of-state businesses. Alabama hasn’t opened a new state prison since 1997.

Overall capacity in the system has climbed just 8 percent since 2001, even as the Department of Corrections’ jurisdictional population shot up 22 percent. There are fewer law enforcement officers watching over those inmates: Since 2006, the number of correctional officers in the system has fallen from 2,483 to 2,124.

Governors and legislators have acknowledged the problem and calls for sentencing reform have gone on for years. For nearly as long, corrections funding has struggled to keep up with the system’s needs. In recent years, state funding for alternative sentencing programs has been cut sharply.

It all adds up to legislators who grasp Alabama’s prison crisis, and a Legislature that keeps it at arm’s length.

“Bonds for building roads and schools and those types of things are popular,” said Rep. Marcel Black, D-Tuscumbia, a former chair of the House Judiciary Committee. “Building for a prison is not popular. You have a general perception that our prisons are just Holiday Inns. It’s not true, but it’s a perception some people have.”

Lawmakers aren’t blind to prison needs. The Legislature has been careful to maintain funding for prisons, even as revenue streams dried up and other departments were cut. Spending on the DOC has doubled since 2001 (in inflation-adjusted terms, the increase is 57 percent). The 2014 General Fund budget, which goes into effect Oct. 1, includes funding to hire 100 additional correctional officers.

(Page 2 of 3)

But correctional officials past and present have said the funding increases barely cover the rising costs of incarcerating felons. When it comes to adequate staffing and pay for correctional officers and staffing, the funding has been wholly unsatisfactory.

“Sometimes in the Legislature we put you in an impossible situation,” Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, the chairman of the Joint Legislative Prison Committee, told Corrections Commissioner Kim Thomas at a recent meeting.

Legislators note that the vast majority of those incarcerated serve time for violent crimes, some 45 of which are listed in Alabama code. Much of the increase in the prison population in the past decade has been driven by a jump in the number of people convicted for murder and first-degree robbery.

The number of drug offenders in Alabama’s corrections system has stayed roughly the same — 7,460 in 2001; 7,588 in 2012 — but the overall percentage of inmates serving drug sentences has declined from about 28 percent to 23 percent, due in part to growth in violent offenders.

“If you look at prisons now, they’re not filled with a bunch of shoplifters,” said Rep. Paul DeMarco, R-Homewood, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “They’re filled with individuals who have committed serious crimes.”

Compared to homicide, the crimes created in the past decade are trivial. In 2008, for example, the Legislature passed a bill, sponsored by Black, that made a second conviction for videotaping movies in a theater a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Other new felonies, such as terrorism and looting, are serious crimes, but unlikely to be committed on a wide scale.

“That’s good politics, is what that is,” Ward said in an interview last week. “That’s the dilemma you have. As legislators, it’s easy to create a new crime. Everyone wants to punish criminals. The question is, ‘What’s the appropriate punishment level, and what’s grandstanding for voters?’ ”

Drug-related felonies, particularly drug manufacturing and methamphetamine crimes created in 2001, have had a notable impact. As of Sept. 30, 2012, 1,533 inmates — 4.7 percent of the jurisdictional population, and 20 percent of the drug offender population — had been convicted for those offenses, considered nonviolent.

(Page 3 of 3)

Ward, Black and other lawmakers acknowledge that raising certain crimes to felonies hasn’t helped the prison crisis. The state’s Habitual Offender Act requires enhanced sentences for individuals convicted of two or more felonies, regardless of whether earlier offenses were violent or not. The state has not revised the law since 2000.

“There are certain crimes that need to be felonies,” said Ward, who sponsored the law this spring creating the crime of elder abuse, a Class A Felony in some cases. “I think what has gotten Alabama into so much trouble is the enhancements. It’s a crime to vandalize a tombstone, but if it’s the tombstone of a veteran, there’s a bill out there that would make it a felony.”

While lawmakers have praised alternative sentencing programs, which manage offenders for a fraction of the cost of incarcerating them, they also have approved state budgets that cut back their funding. Even though a quarter of DOC’s inmates in 2012 were in custody for drug offenses, 91 percent of which are considered nonviolent, state funding for drug courts has been cut 45 percent since 2009.

“There’s always a reach for more money,” said Black, who has sought increases in funding to alternative sentencing programs. “There are legitimate programs you fight for ... But when you deal with something with prisoners, that usually drifts down to the lower end of the spectrum in importance.”

The political inertia is why Lloyd Wallace, a retired ADOC captain and former president of the Alabama Correctional Association, thinks federal intervention is the only way the state will get its arms around the problem.

“I know the state doesn’t want to see it, especially not the legislators, because the feds are going to make them spend the money and they are going to have to come up with it,” he said. “But unless they do, I think they are just going to continue with this Band-Aid approach until something really bad happens.”

Lawmakers hope it will not come to that.

“At end of the day, it’s our job to fix it, and for us to keep kicking it down the road, that’s not real leadership,” Ward said. “If we’re as strong advocates of the 10th Amendment as we say, we’ll take care of this ourselves, without the federal government coming and solving it for us.”